Digital Camera News, 2/6/08

Fujifilm has released updated firmware for its Finepix Z10fd and Z100fd ultracompact digital cameras.

New programming for the Z10fd shortens start-up time when using an xD-Picture Card and fixes a file transfer issue involving Windows Vista. The Z100fd update addresses the same start-up concern, and improves white balance when shooting in the camera’s underwater mode.

Click the link here to download the Z10fd update from Fujifilm, or visit the link here for the Z100fd version.

Nikon has seen a 3-percent upward movement on the Tokyo Stock Exchange today on the announcement that it’s raising profit forecasts for the rest of the fiscal year by 5.7 percent.

A story filed on Bloomberg.com today attributes a large portion of the better-than-average sales growth to the introduction of the new D3 professional body and the highly successful D300 advanced DSLR late last year.

All of this puts Nikon in a position to catch up, in terms of sales for the year, with Japanese rival Olympus – due to "an expected slowdown in sales of digital cameras, especially in the United States," according to a recent press release from Japan Corporate News. Yesterday, the larger Olympus Corporation announced that it is reducing its total sales estimate for the year by approximately half a million units.

In spite of the sales slowdown, Olympus is also reporting that annual net profit should remain largely unchanged.

With Nikon investing more and more resources in its point-and-shoot business, and Olympus seeming to have increasing trouble asserting itself in a compact camera market thick with choices, it will be interesting to see whether this change of fortunes for both companies represents the beginning of a long-term trend.

In one of the many press releases that got buried during the PMA shuffle, Eye-Fi announced late last week yet another downloadable upgrade for its wireless image transfer tool.

The so-called "Smart Boost" upgrade evaluates whether or not the user’s home computer is turned on when the Wi-Fi based Eye-Fi SD card connects to a home wireless network: if the home computer is up and running, the card transfers images bound for photo sharing sites to the computer first, and then uses the computer’s more efficient internet connection to send the files to the web. Otherwise, the card proceeds as with earlier versions, sending images straight to the specified site or sites.

According to Eye-Fi, the change results in a more efficient transfer process, reducing card activity and ultimately saving camera battery life.

Smart Boost should be available for current Eye-Fi users to download free of charge by next week.